It's Officially Negative!!

Today was the final day for my HCG levels to be detected on a HPT and it came back with a BFN!! I was surprisingly calm about it this morning and today but I just layed in bed all day moping. My parents did swing by to say sorry and give me a hug and then we went to breakfast at IHOP with them and my niece which was surprisingly nice!!

Yesterday I was an emotional wreck and spent most of the day crying, being crabby or just in general having a big pity party while attempting to clean our disaster of a house. I even baked some mini cakes that look like trains and presents that I am going to fill with cream and then eat them, YUM!! Mr. Explorer Bud stayed in the garage pulling an engine where he was safe, for the most part, from my craziness!!

I am glad that we know for sure and there is not a cliff hanger for a week. I am glad I don't have to take shots anymore or all the pills, not that I would've minded if I were pregnant but it is nice to be done. I took the patches off and didn't take anything today so it feels final. I will probably still have spouts of sadness and anger but I am mostly just feeling resigned that we will not be having kids in the next year or two. I think we will just wait to do another IVF cycle after Mr. Explorer Bud is out of school. Maybe that is what we are supposed to be waiting for in the first place so why keep trying. Of course there won't be any prevention going on in the bedroom but like the Dr. said it is less than a 1% chance of occurring naturally and that was before I lost my left fallopian tube!!

Hopefully AF will arrive sooner than later so we can move on with it all!!

Egg Retrieval

Today was the big day, the egg retrieval. I went in at 9:00 am for the procedure and was feeling great. The past two days I had some discomfort in my ovaries but that day I felt great and was ready to go. Besides how could I not be feeling great with the amazing get up that they give you for the procedure!!



The Dr. was able to retrieve 12 good sized eggs and Mr. EB arrived a 1/2 hour after the procedure to give his sample, so Monday I can call the Dr. and see how many fertilized and the time and day for the transfer. This time around I am feeling a lot more discomfort after the retrieval. I am not sure if it is because of more eggs or what but I am enjoying the Tylenol! The Dr. gave me my long list of meds that I get to start taking now. Estrogen patches, estrogen pills, progesterone shots, baby Asprin, loads of folic acid and an antibiotic. Oh the fun pill popping resumes but it is better than all the shots in the stomach!

For those of you that don't know what happens with an egg retrieval I found this great explanation and video.

"The egg retrieval is performed thirty-six hours after hCG injection. You are given sedation by an anesthesiologist through an intravenous catheter, a small tube in an arm vein. You are not completely asleep, but in a sort of twilight state; you remember very little of the retrieval. After you are sedated, the vagina is washed with a salt water solution. A needle is placed under ultrasound guidance into the ovary and fluid and eggs from the follicles in your ovaries are collected into a test tube and sent to the IVF lab. The whole procedure takes about 30 minutes, and discomfort is generally minimal. On average eggs will be retrieved from over two thirds of the follicles.

Click here to view laboratory footage of an oocyte retrieval."

Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise

The IVF 2ww is unlike any other.

Not only are you dealing with the regular 2ww type things, but you're actually injecting your body and taking pills with EXTRA hormones to further convince your body what you already know: You're pregnant until proven otherwise. It makes things harder than I can explain.

And, 8dp3dt (= 11DPO) I think I'm hitting the wall.

The past couple of days have been REALLY hard. I keep searching for something to definitively tell me that I'm pregnant or not (short of POAS, because that's not an option). I've cried only a little bit. I tried to get squeezed in at my IF therapist, but she can't fit me in before beta.

I've been positive this whole time. I hardly even thought of the "what if". Now it's all I'm thinking about.

All I can think of is what happened last time. We got the phone call, and my husband came home from work, because he could hear it in my voice on the phone, and he didn't want me to be in the house by myself. And I just cried for HOURS.

That's all I can think about now... is how I was after that phone call.

So, someone give me something to grab onto until beta - because I HATE feeling how I feel right now. I want to go back to 2 days ago, when I was Joe Positive.

I don't like being this scared little girl, hoping that I'm pregnant.

Those 2 nearly perfect embryos... if this doesn't work.... I just can't imagine.